Wessler: IHSA students sing national anthem 'the right way'

PEORIA — The people who tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to sing the national anthem are wrong.

There are lots of right ways and lots of wrong ways to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and which ways are right or wrong mostly depend on the listener.

At the risk of igniting a political holy war, I offer the following. If you are singing the anthem at a gathering of military veterans, the right way is pretty straight. On the other hand, if you’re at Woodstock in 1969, the right way might be to skip the words and just shred the thing on your electric guitar.

So, where does that leave the high school students who were chosen to perform the anthem at the IHSA boys state basketball tournaments this weekend?

“Terrified,” Emilie Knieriemen said.

Friday was the first time Knieriemen ever sang the anthem solo in public. She is a senior at Hampshire High School, blessed with a beautiful soprano voice, and she is well accustomed to public solos. Knieriemen has performed in musical theater and is currently rehearsing to star as Belle in her school’s production of “Beauty and the Beast.”

But the national anthem is a totally different deal.

“It’s the song everybody knows,” she said.

Yes, it is. You mess up just one word, or one note, and even the 3-year-olds in the crowd will catch you.

There are more ways to wreck the anthem, though, than simply forgetting words or going flat while reaching for the high notes. People are generally forgiving about honest mistakes.

Turning the anthem into a personal showcase that confirms you consider your presumed vocal prowess more important than anything else in the country? Not so much.

Take Fergie, who gained acclaim as the lead singer for The Black Eyed Peas. She performed the anthem before the NBA All-Star Game last month. It took her so long to get from “O say can you see” to the “home of the brave” that she finished only yesterday. The words got so tarted up with extra syllables they were almost unintelligible.

Knieriemen and Kevin Kuska, a senior tenor from Pontiac who performed before the state finals Saturday, both reacted to Fergie’s rendition with facial expressions that suggested they had just swallowed warm, sour milk.

“I didn’t see it live, but I couldn’t even watch the whole video,” Knieriemen said. “I don’t think you should take something like the national anthem and change it as drastically as she did.”

“She tried to overdo it and make it too poppy instead of honoring our nation,” Kuska said. “I think it was kind of sad.”

Neither high school singer objected to an artist taking some liberties with the anthem. There are plenty of ways to arrange the anthem well. If you’ve been to enough sports venues, you’ve heard it done with hints of country, rock, blues, classical or other genres. You’ve heard it bold and brash, or subdued and reverent. But you’ve still heard it done well.

“Every pop star has done their own things,” said Kuska, who aspires to musical theater and is prepping to play Teve in “Fiddler on the Roof.” “Some,” he continued, “have been respectable and some have been not how they should be.”

What these kids were saying – and this is key – is that the national anthem should be done with respect for something that’s bigger than ourselves. You sing the anthem, it’s not about you, it’s about all of us and those who have gone before. It’s about our national ideals, which we don’t always succeed in achieving, but we’re sure going to keep trying.

If you are the big deal we’re here to celebrate, go sing “All I Wanna Do” – a fine and funky song by Sheryl Crow, but not one that comes to mind when we’re raising the flag and honoring the nation.

Knieriemen and Kuska each chose a classic anthem approach and executed well. They sang a capella and without a cheat sheet – impressive feats.

“The anthem means a lot, so people universally connect to it,” Knieremen said. “When you care about what you’re singing, it just comes through.”

Loud and clear.

Kirk Wessler is Journal Star sports editor. Contact him at kwessler@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @KirkWessler.

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